But Brown wanted the quadrangle for reasons even more pressing that marks.

Two years ago alumni and undergraduates watched fraternities squabble with the university over liquor and parietal restrictions. They saw houses that leaked and lighting that was inadequate. Besides poor facilities, the frats were scattered over College Hill. All sense of small college unity had seeped away. Independents and commuters had unequal facilities.

"Quad" Cohesion

Wriston envisioned the solution and today the "Quadrangle" stands as a monument to the new Brown cohesion. This eight-acre series of muddled dorms and fraternities houses 60 per cent of the undergraduates. A pale-red brick wall and grass moat surround the labyrinth of closely-packed buildings. No one suffers from clostrophobia and everyone finds they have a new centralized social life.

Symbol of new Brown unity, the low slung "Refectory" serves 3000 meals to faculty and students at lunch and dinner. The reverse of Harvard, where freshman life in the yard, Brown relegates the newcomers to scattered dormitories 100 years old. From there, they all trudge daily to the "Refree." While once the fraternity boys isolated themselves in their own "off-campus" dining room, today they rub elbows with the commuter and independent--if just at meals. Living in houses distinguished only by the greek-lettering over the doorways, the chapter man's one concession from the university is the questionable privilege of eating in a private room which projects off the main dining rectangle.

Senior frat-men fondly remember the old freedoms, which if illegal, were freely practiced and rarely condemned. But they are a minority which will graduate this spring. The new generation, which likes the bright lighting and big windows, eats lunch while music blares from Refrectory loud-speakers, and can't picture a decentralized Brown.

Commuter Isolation

Long popular with the local gentry, the college's Gallup rating has jumped noticeably since the quad's completion. Twenty percent of the undergraduates commute from nearby Providence and many are clamoring to live with the big windows and dinner music. But the quad is already crammed.

With no rooms open, commuters find they are isolated from the centralized social life of the college. Last spring their unrest broke out in demands for a special commuter's center equipped with beds and easy chairs. The center was bought but there are no chairs or beds as yet. It stands today as an empty reminder of Brown's struggle to bind the college into a social and academic unit, a struggle which is so far fairly successful.

Wriston now feels he has some definite points in his favor in the battle for top students. The quadrangle has not only helped raise the college's academic average but it has proved a tangible attraction to parents who want to see their sons situated in pleasant surroundings.

He keeps constant check on his Ivy competitors and their admissions policies. He is willing to battle, but has perhaps taken on more competition than he can hope to conquer.

Wriston's Admissions

The Brown president has radically altered the college's admissions policy to meet competition. The new policy puts primary emphasis on attracting the intellectual. It has replaced the long-held Brown tradition of provincialism with new plans aimed at attracting a widely-distributed student body. Almost half the the cosmopolitan university threads onto College Hill from out of state, particularly from the St. Louis area.

The one section where Brown has been noticeably unsuccessful in attracting students is in the South, once its most fertile out-of-state undergraduate source. In fact, of the Brown alumni killed in the Civil War, almost half were Confederates who had come North to gain a New England Baptist education. But Brown has gradually lost its liberal Baptist tinge, and the Southern hard-shells have grown to mistrust anything north of the Mason-Dixon.

The president has carried on a highly successful drive to revise his entire administrative organization. He now has a top educator and progressive thinker in vice-president Bruce M. Bigelow who administers his stopped-up intellectual program. His drive, pointed toward cutting astronomical student mortality figures, has succeeded in bringing expulsions down to half their former number. But there is a limit to what can be accomplished without capital and facilities to attract top educators.